Margaret Sanger: Mother of the Sexual Revolution
CHAPTER 68 — MARGARET SANGER: MOTHER OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION
American Life League
[Because of birth control], child slavery, prostitution, feeble mindedness, physical deterioration, hunger, oppression and war will disappear from the earth. There will come a Plato who will be understood, a Socrates who will drink no hemlock, and a Jesus who will not die upon the cross. These and the race that is to be in America await upon a motherhood that is to be sacred because it is free.
Margaret Sanger, Woman and the New Race.[1]
Anti-Life Philosophy.
Anti-choice fanatics are smearing the memory of Planned Parenthood's saintly founder, Margaret Sanger, with unfounded lies and distortions. She was a noble health professional who simply wanted to improve the lot of poor women by providing basic information on birth control. This allowed them to finally end the plague of unwanted children, so that they could turn their attention towards bettering the lot of themselves and their families.
As the former President of Planned Parenthood, Faye Wattleton, so insightfully said; "No one can really interpret what Sanger meant because she's dead."[2]
Introduction.
Margaret Sanger was born an innocent baby in 1879 and died a bisexual Demerol and alcohol addict who spawned the most monstrous organization ever conceived the International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).
Sanger was a proponent of forced eugenics, free love, and birth control and abortion. More than any other entities, Margaret Sanger and her organization were responsible for the so-called 'sexual revolution' which has destroyed millions of families, debased countless women, and paved the way for tens of millions of people to wallow in the pit of sexual addiction which, worst of all, leads in most cases to a total loss of conscience.
Physically, Mentally, and Emotionally Handicapped Beware!
Introduction.
The fact that Margaret Sanger was this country's foremost proponent and advocate of eugenics is little known, and Planned Parenthood would dearly love to keep this information secret. Witness PP's comically desperate efforts to 'keep the lid on' when Pat Robertson publicized Sanger's past during the 1988 Presidential primary campaign.
Maggie Sanger Eugenicist. There can be no doubt that Sanger wholeheartedly supported eugenics, which was the underpinning of the Nazi genocide program, as shown by her many quotes in Figure 68-1.
FIGURE 68-1
RACIST AND EUGENICIST STATEMENTS BY MARGARET SANGER, THE FOUNDER OF PLANNED PARENTHOOD
We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.
Margaret Sanger's December 19, 1939 letter to Dr. Clarence Gamble, 255 Adams Street, Milton, Massachusetts. Original source: Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, North Hampton, Massachusetts. Also described in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
Our failure to segregate morons who are increasing and multiplying ... demonstrates our foolhardy and extravagant sentimentalism ... [Philanthropists] encourage the healthier and more normal sections of the world to shoulder the burden of unthinking and indiscriminate fecundity of others; which brings with it, as I think the reader must agree, a dead weight of human waste. Instead of decreasing and aiming to eliminate the stocks that are most detrimental to the future of the race and the world, it tends to render them to a menacing degree dominant ... We are paying for, and even submitting to, the dictates of an ever-increasing, unceasingly spawning class of human beings who never should have been born at all.
Margaret Sanger. The Pivot of Civilization, 1922. Chapter on "The Cruelty of Charity," pages 116, 122, and 189. Swarthmore College Library edition.
Today eugenics is suggested by the most diverse minds as the most adequate and thorough avenue to the solution of racial, political and social problems.
I think you must agree ... that the campaign for birth control is not merely of eugenic value, but is practically identical with the final aims of eugenics ... Birth control propaganda is thus the entering wedge for the eugenic educator.
As an advocate of birth control I wish ... to point out that the unbalance between the birth rate of the 'unfit' and the 'fit,' admittedly the greatest present menace to civilization, can never be rectified by the inauguration of a cradle competition between these two classes. In this matter, the example of the inferior classes, the fertility of the feeble-minded, the mentally defective, the poverty-stricken classes, should not be held up for emulation.
On the contrary, the most urgent problem today is how to limit and discourage the over-fertility of the mentally and physically defective.
Margaret Sanger. "The Eugenic Value of Birth Control Propaganda." Birth Control Review, October 1921, page 5.
Give dysgenic groups [people with 'bad genes'] in our population their choice of segregation or [compulsory] sterilization.
Margaret Sanger, April 1932 Birth Control Review.
The third group [of society] are those irresponsible and reckless ones having little regard for the consequences of their acts, or whose religious scruples prevent their exercising control over their numbers. Many of this group are diseased, feeble-minded, and are of the pauper element dependent upon the normal and fit members of society for their support. There is no doubt in the minds of all thinking people that the procreation of this group should be stopped.
Margaret Sanger. Speech quoted in Birth Control: What It Is, How It Works, What It Will Do. The Proceedings of the First American Birth Control Conference. Held at the Hotel Plaza, New York City, November 11-12, 1921. Published by the Birth Control Review, Gothic Press, pages 172 and 174.
In passing, we should here recognize the difficulties presented by the idea of 'fit' and 'unfit.' Who is to decide this question? The grosser, the more obvious, the undeniably feeble-minded should, indeed, not only be discouraged but prevented from propagating their kind. But among the writings of the representative Eugenists [sic], one cannot ignore the distinct middle-class bias that prevails.
Margaret Sanger, quoted in Charles Valenza. "Was Margaret Sanger a Racist?" Family Planning Perspectives, January-February 1985, page 44.
Birth control must lead ultimately to a cleaner race.
Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. Page 12.
There is only one reply to a request for a higher birthrate among the intelligent, and that is to ask the government to first take the burden of the insane and feeble-minded from your back. [Mandatory] sterilization for these is the answer.
Margaret Sanger, October 1926 Birth Control Review.
[Slavs, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are] human weeds ... a deadweight of human waste ... [Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a] menace to the race.
Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent Multiplication of this bad stock.
Margaret Sanger, [...] Birth Control Review.
[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children ... [Women must have the right] to live ... to love ... to be lazy ... to be an unmarried mother ... to create ... to destroy ... The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order ... The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.
Margaret Sanger (editor). The Woman Rebel, Volume I, Number 1. Reprinted in Woman and the New Race. New York: Brentanos Publishers, 1922.
Her philosophy was entirely in line with the fact that many of her influential friends were members of the International Eugenics Society, of which she was a leading member. Some of the best-known members of this worldwide octopuslike organization are listed below.
LEADING MEMBERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL EUGENICS SOCIETY
• Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood;
• The Rev. Dr. D.S. Bailey, participant in the Anglican Lambeth Conference of 1930 that first approved of contraception;
• Professor D. Baird and Professor W.C.W. Nixon, Britain's most famous illegal abortionists;
• Sir John Cockburn, President of the International Masons;
• Sir Charles Darwin and Leonard Darwin, the grandson and son of evolutionist Charles Darwin;
• C.V. Drysdale, lawyer and Secretary of the Malthusian League;
• Havelock Ellis, Sanger's lover;
• Francis Galton, founder of the American eugenics movement and author of the 1869 work Hereditary Genius;
• Mrs. Vera Houghton, First General Secretary of International Planned Parenthood Federation and Chief Executive of the Abortion Law Reform Association; married to Lord Houghton, head of the British Labour Party in the 1970s;
• Julian S. Huxley, Secretary General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO);
• Lord John Maynard Keynes, famous economist, editor of The Economic Journal for 34 years, and governor of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (his wife, Lady Keynes, was also a member of the Eugenics Society);
• Alfred Ploetz, founder of the Nazi Society for Racial Hygiene;
• Malcolm Potts, President, International Planned Parenthood Federation;
and
• Marie Stopes, American birth control pioneer and founder of the Society for Constructive Birth Control and Racial Progress.
Reference: Katherine S. O'Keefe. "Crypto-Eugenics: The Hidden Agenda of Planned Parenthood." 1991, 52 pages. Order from St. George Financial Research, Post Office Box 171, Asbury, New Jersey 18802-0171. Appendix B lists the names of more than 500 members of the Eugenics Society from 1907 to the present.
Sanger traveled all over the world in pursuit of the promotion of eugenics, birth control, and population control. On one occasion, she even met with Mahatma Gandhi in an attempt to get him to endorse birth control for the purpose of controlling his country's population. His words to Sanger was typically gentle, but in reality represented a stinging rebuke to her anti-life cause;
In the light of what I have said above, birth control by contraceptives and the like is a profound error. I write thus with a full sense of my responsibility. I have great regard for Mrs. Margaret Sanger and her followers. She impressed me much by her great zeal for her cause. I know that she has great sympathy for the women who suffer because they have to bear the burden of a lifetime of carrying and rearing unwanted children. I know also that this method of birth control has the support of many Protestant divines, scientists, learned men, and doctors, many of whom I have the honour of knowing personally and for whom I entertain high regard. But should I be false to my God who is Truth and nothing but the Truth, if I concealed my belief from the reader or these great advocates of the method. Indeed, if I hid my belief, I should never discover my error, if my present belief is one.[3]
Maggie Sanger Racist.
Sanger was without question a racist of the first rank, and it is incomprehensible to most pro-life activists that she continues to be honored in this country. School films routinely portray her as a 'pioneer for women's rights.' And the United States Postal Service issued a stamp in honor of her 100th birthday in 1979.
Human beings were nothing more than farm animals to Margaret Sanger, and this view is reflected in the terms she applied to those that did not measure up to her high standards of perfection. For example, she habitually referred to blacks and Jews as "bad stock." Her label for her dreamed-of Master Race was a "race of thoroughbreds," as described in the November 1921 Birth Control Review.
In the April 1933 issue of the same periodical, Sanger said that "[Slavs, Latin, and Hebrew immigrants are] human weeds ... a deadweight of human waste ... [Blacks, soldiers, and Jews are a] menace to the race. ... Eugenic sterilization is an urgent need ... We must prevent multiplication of this bad stock."
Sanger advocated a program that would;
... hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don't want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.[4]
We must conclude from the above statements that Planned Parenthood possesses at least a rudimentary if crude sense of humor. The recipient of the 1963 Margaret Sanger Award (for outstanding dedication to PP's principles) was none other than Martin Luther King the best-known Black minister of his day!
Faye Wattleton, former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (and who, amusingly, is herself Black), at PPFA's annual luncheon in St. Louis, on May 2, 1979, stated that "I believe Margaret Sanger would have been proud of us today if she had seen the directions that we have most recently in this organization taken."[5]
Even Marxist theorists, though so very blind in other areas, recognize the obviously racist nature of Planned Parenthood and the other population controllers. Alexander Cockburn wrote that "The not-so-concealed theme of some major figures in NARAL and NOW was that abortion should be legal because the most prolific breeders were welfare mothers from the dangerous classes ... the leader of NARAL in New York lobbied against the provisions to protect poor minority women from involuntary sterilization, and so did Planned Parenthood."[6]
Speaking of genetics and eugenics, Sanger apparently managed to pass on her poisoned bloodline to her grandson, Alexander C. Sanger, who became President and Chief Executive Officer of Planned Parenthood of New York City in January of 1991. This organization has a budget of $18 million a year and 250 workers. The new menace boasted that
I intend to be out on the front lines of our issues. That is why I'm here ... Right now, we have three clinics in this [New York] city and I want ten more. We currently have a small storefront office in central Harlem, and it is my first priority to see if we can transform that into a clinic ... With all her success, my grandmother left some unfinished business, and I intend to finish it.[7]
Seeing how his grandmother desired to "exterminate the Black race," a clinic in Harlem would be a great way to "finish it."
Margaret Sanger Anti-Family and Anti-Child.
We are not going to be an organization promoting celibacy or chastity.
Faye Wattleton.[8]
Although it comically refers to itself as "The largest pro-family organization in America," Planned Parenthood has done more than any other entity to tear at the foundations of family life.
PP supports sexual perversions of every type, abortion for any reason, euthanasia, permissive sex education, and school-based clinics, faithfully adhering to the tradition established by its dishonorable founder.
Margaret Sanger embraced literally any influence that could reasonably be expected to destroy family life and the relationships between spouses and parents and children. She claimed that "[Our objective is] unlimited sexual gratification without the burden of unwanted children." Her credo of women's rights was "to live ... to love ... to be lazy ... to be an unmarried mother ... to create ... to destroy." She also claimed that "The marriage bed is the most degenerative influence in the social order," and that "The most merciful thing that a family does to one of its infant members is to kill it."[1]
Sanger's anti-life and anti-family philosophy has been effectively passed down to almost all latter-day Planned Parenthood workers. One infallible method for predicting where Planned Parenthood or any of its workers will stand on any particular issue is to ask the question: Will the action under consideration weaken or strengthen the family? If the answer is that it will weaken the family, then PP will invariably support it.
As just one of many examples, a law that forbids husbands from protecting their preborn children in any way might be reasonably expected to weaken the relationship between spouses. Louise Tyrer, vice-president of medical affairs at Planned Parenthood, therefore opposes any rights for the fathers of preborn children; "But it doesn't matter how much men scream and holler that they are being left out [of the abortion decision]. There are some things that they are never going to be able to experience fully. I say, 'tough luck.'"[9]
Sanitizing History.
PP has its hands full sanitizing Sanger's rotten memory, and this sometimes leads to humorous or even ludicrous situations involving massive doses of damage control.
In early 1989, radio talk show host Jan Mickelson of Station WHO in Iowa conducted a mock interview of 'Sanger,' who was represented by a woman friend. The ersatz 'Sanger' quoted directly out of 'her' written works, and listeners heard the racist condemn Catholics, blacks, Jews, Slavs and others she considered "biologically unfit."
MIckelson never informed his audience that Sanger had died in 1966.
Planned Parenthood, which hates to see its corrupt and racist root system exposed, was understandably enraged. Its local director, Jill June, fumed that the show was a "terrible, cruel hoax." She went on to say that "We in Planned Parenthood are huge supporters of freedom of the press and free speech, but this represents a total breakdown in ethics in broadcast journalism."
This last statement brought gales of laughter from pro-life activists all over the nation, in light of the established fact that Planned Parenthood does its best to crush legal picketing, vocal dissent to its policies, and even informed consent for the abortion procedure itself.
Fortunately, Mickelson was strongly defended by his station manager, Steve Shannon.
It is interesting that Planned Parenthood has so much power that it can even censor books and what people can see regarding its history in public libraries. For example, the Oregon State Library lets its copy of Sanger's Woman and the New Race go with the utmost reluctance. A statement on the inside front cover warns;
This is a restricted book not usually put on the open shelves, but lent only to mature readers. It does not mean that the book is a bad book, but that it might be offensive to some and possibly injurious to others. It is lent to patrons of the State Library with the understanding that it will not be handed to others nor generally circulated.
According to Dr. Vincent Rue, post-abortion syndrome expert and co-director of the Institute for Abortion Recovery and Research, based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Planned Parenthood successfully pressured the publishers Harper & Row into canceling Dr. Anne Speckhard's book Psycho-Social Stress Following Abortion.[10]
The book was finally published by Sheed and Ward.
References: Margaret Sanger.
[1] All quotes are from Margaret Sanger. Woman and the New Race. Brentanos, 1922, page 161.
[2] Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood. Quoted in the New York City Tribune, February 23, 1988, page 1. Also quoted in Judie Brown. "The Wattleton-Sanger Tradition: Deception." May 1988, pages 18 and 19.
[3] Mahatma Gandhi, quoted in Father A.S. Antonisamy. Wisdom for All Times: Mahatma Gandhi and Pope Paul VI on Birth Regulation. Family Life Service Centre, Archbishop's House, Pondicherry 605001 India. June 1978. Quotes are taken from D.G. Tendulkar (Editor). The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volumes 2 and 4. Published by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.
[4] Sanger's October 19, 1939 letter to Clarence Gamble, discussed in Linda Gordon's Woman's Body, Woman's Right: A Social History of Birth Control in America. New York: Grossman Publishers, 1976.
[5] Faye Wattleton, president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA), at PPFA's annual luncheon in St. Louis, on May 2, 1979.
[6] Alexander Cockburn, quoted in Proletarian Revolution, Fall 1989, page 28.
[7] "Another Sanger Leads Planned Parenthood." The New York Times, January 23, 1991, page B2
[8] Faye Wattleton, former president of Planned Parenthood. Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, October 17, 1986, Part V, page 1. Also quoted in Judie Brown. "The Wattleton-Sanger Tradition: Deception." May 1988, pages 18 and 19.
[9] Louise Tyrer of Planned Parenthood, quoted in John Leo. "Sharing the Pain of Abortion." Time Magazine, September 26, 1983, page 78. For more information on men's role in abortion, see the book by Arthur Shostak, Gary McLouth and Lynn Seng. Men and Abortion: Lessons, Losses, and Love. Praeger Publishers, 1984.
[10] As described in Human Life of Washington State. Human Life News, January/February 1990, page 1. The book in question is Anne Speckhard's Psycho-Social Stress Following Abortion. Kansas City, Missouri: Sheed and Ward, 1987. 134 pages. Reviewed by Gary Crum, Ph.D., on page 44 of the October 1988 issue of ALL About Issues. This book analyzes the results of 30 in-depth interviews of women who have had abortions and compiles the results to arrive at a summary of all of the symptoms of post-abortion syndrome.
Further Reading: Margaret Sanger.
Elasah Drogin. Margaret Sanger: Father of Modern Society.
New Hope, Kentucky: Catholics United for Life. 1979, 112 pages. Reviewed by John Cavanaugh-O'Keefe on page 12 of the August 18, 1980 National Right to Life News.
Margaret Sanger. Woman and the New Race.
Reprinted in 1969 by permission of the Sanger Estate by the Maxwell Reprint Company, Fairview Park, Elmsford, New York 10523. Any pro-life activist who wants to become familiar with the real attitudes and philosophy of the anti-life movement and Neofeminism in general should read this book. It is an utterly fascinating treatise by one of the original Neofeminists.
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This is a chapter of the Pro-Life Activist’s Encyclopedia published by American Life League.
